In the past, nail polish and enamels were usually air dried after they were applied in an effort to speed up the very slow drying process. Even this air drying process required a very long period of time before the nail polish dried on the nail. While waiting for the polish to dry, the polish wearer had to be extremely careful to avoid touching the surface of the nails, or else the polish would smear or smudge, resulting in a ruined manicure. In effect, the nail polish user or wearer was prevented from using their hands in any normal, everyday activity while the polish was drying. This especially proved burdensome for beauty salon customers who needed to manipulate or handle purses, car keys, and other objects immediately after receiving a manicure.
Various devices have been developed to try to expedite the drying process. These devices generally consisted of a box-type dryer which blew or circulated hot or cold air onto the wet surface of each of the nails for a specified period of time. However, this device, if successful, could only dry the top nail polish protection coating on each nail and did not dry the nail polish located underneath the top coating. Also, blowing a stream of air directly on a nail covered with wet nail polish would sometimes cause the polish to ripple from the direct air pressure. Consequently, additional exposure for an extended period of time to the drying air was usually required to dry the lower coating or coating of nail polish and the manicure was still easily ruined if the nail surface came into contact with another hard surface or the drying air was moving too fast. As a result, nail polish users or wearers still had to use their hands cautiously for relatively long periods of time so as not to ruin the manicure.